Bottom line, I am trying to set something up for my import business.
Many thanks for help!
Hello, I'm a long time member and 'resident' of zurich although I have not seen/ nor come across any pointers here on the site re: setting up a website. Plus, times change quickly on the best approach - so, I would be grateful for any advice. And better yet, if you have any referrals for support?
Domain registration:
http://www.switchplus.ch/?lang=en
Website design - outsource or overpay!
Hostpoint are easy to work with and quick, and offer everything in English. They took over from switchplus, prices are pretty good.
But switchplus is still there ... Do you mean switch.ch? Switchplus has good reviews as far as I can tell and is reasonably priced. Also everything in English. You can register your domain with them and then use their free templates to create your website.
It depends what you are looking for, how many Email addresses and how much storage space and pages you require. There are loads of Swiss hosting companies, green.ch, hostpoint.ch etc, etc. SWITCH stopped organizing the .ch domain name, but all the other companies offer that. Just google: domain name and web hosting Switzerland.
If you are not familiar with setting up websites, which can be a pain in the arse anyway, I would suggest using an online web building system, there are quite a few on the market, such as lightcms, WIX and many more, with different monthly fees for packages such as ecommerce etc. You have a professional look at a fraction of the cost and its easy. It is much cheaper and far less time consuming then doing the coding yourself or getting a web designer in Switzerland, which can cost anything from 4k upwards in the 10s of thousands. Check whether they accept a domain with .ch first though, otherwise you will have to pay a separate domain and redirection fee through a hosting company here.
Hi, having setup a website very recently, I can suggest if you're website is not terribly complex to start by selecting a cms platform (wordpress for instance is the largest by number of websites using it), then look for a wordpress developer preferrably outside switzerland in order to get more affordable prices. Germany is one option, Easter Europe (Romania, Estonia) is another. You will save a lot, but if you chose Eastern Europe you'll need to be more hands-on in terms of project management because the attention to detail is not the same.
Ideally the developer will have some level of design capability too - but up to you to decide whether that's a priority (personally I think it should be as general rule).
In terms of buying a domain and finding a hosting provider you can either do that yourself (by the way it doesn't have to be a swiss hosting provider) or get the developer to help you with both. If you build on wordpress you'll find lots of wordpress hosting partners. Good luck!
https://products.office.com/en-US/bu...business-plans
Domain name from Go Daddy
Hi
I use Weebly.com and designed my own website - then I use hosting from Hostpoint.ch and got them to point the website to them. Its really an inexpensive way to get going and the templates from Weebly are great (as is their customer support) Good luck!
m
I had my website build in India. Very well done and not expensive. Further there is a very easy to use interface that lets me edit and add text. Its not a webshop. You need a clear picture of what you want and you will be good. otherwise go with the advice above on online building websites
The most important part of the whole thing is to have very clear ideas about your objectives.
Do you want to use the website for marketing or for selling?
If you sell do you want customers to pay with credit cards, Paypal, invoices (before or after sale).
Do you deliver stuff? Is the weight significant?
Are you MWST registered?
How will you enter stuff in your website? Do you have a small number of big things or a large number of small things? Do you offer stuff in multiple sizes/colours or is everyone unique?
Do you need to track stock levels? Do you want to block orders for out-of-stock items?
Do you want your site to automatically display "best sellers", special price offers, new products.
Do you have constantly changing stock so you need to easily delete products.
Do you want to have a search function to enable people to search through your site.
Do you want to make your site available to everyone or do you want to have only certain parts available to certain groups.
Do you want to automatically generate emails in reply to people who email you.
Bear in mind that if you have your site built by someone else, you might lose control if something happens to the company that built it. I have a friend who paid a lot of money for her site, the company has gone under & she lost her site (but kept the domain name). She couldn't do any updates to what they had created as it was a service they provided & kept the rights to it.
If you just want a basic thing you can do it yourself. Templates are provided & you can work it out with the help of the online forums of other users.
I am working for a swiss Internet Marketing (i am not programmer) and taking care of SEO for Clients Websites.
From my experience
If you dont want your private Domain email (using free email)
this webbase CMS is one of the best. You can have like 15 inner pages
http://www.squarespace.com/ and i think the Price per year is 100CHF.
you can Register .ch Domain by namecheap.com or Name.com which are cheaper than Switch.ch and you can just Redirect or attach your main domain Name to the Website easily.
Weak Point is squarespace doesnt offer huge choice of template. But they are good for SEO. They are plain HTML and have split all necessary Points that Need to work on for SEO.
Wix.com is ok , huge list of nice template , but they create the template under Ajax and this make the URL turn to be like www.abc.ch/service#133 and you can not Change it. At this point if you want to do the SEO , it would be better if you can Change to place your Focus keywords into sub-page URL , for example , www.abc.ch/service/product-zurich.html
another one Option is Jimdo.com but i think the Price is a Little bit higher than squarspace and wix.
I myself find this three are the best of all and much cheaper. There are many swiss based Companies make good Job for web-base cms System. But they are not perfectly prepared the System for SEO.
Basically, you just need to register a domain name and then find somewhere to host your website.
I am very happy with hostpoint.
I am not a web designer, however I designed a few websites and taught people how to work with wordpress.
Best wishes
H
Pulling this post out of the ashes....
I would like to move my website hosting from GoDaddy to someone easier to work with (and GoDaddy's pricing has gone up considerably with no real benefit that I can see).
Anyway, I would like any recommendations to move my hosting and domain to.
I looked at Hostpoint but the reviews online are terrible (and not too many of them, either). I'm also looking at Cyon.ch, since they are local (Basel) - not that a web host needs to be local.
Thanks for any suggestions you might have!
Hi -
Nothing changed - I am now more than 5 years with Hostpoint and I am a very happy camper. You can call them via skype (so no cost when solving a technical problem) and they are very helpful and know what they are talking about ....
Thanks for reviving this thread, DantesDame! Very timely for me. I had my very simple website hosted on Swizzonic.ch (used to be Switchplus.ch) for years and it was cheap and fairly easy to use. But no longer! I'm looking for a new host because they've done this lousy trick where if you make changes to your site, they tell you that your changes can't be uploaded because you have more than 3 pages. They then make you a "friendly" offer of upgrading to their premium service - about three times the yearly cost. I tried to delete pages to get it down to three and wasn't able to. So now I need to change. Really ticked me off! Would also appreciate any suggestions for an alternative. Thanks, Blowntobits, but Hostpoint is more than I would be comfortable paying.
Oh, I should say, I offer a service so the website is basically for information. I don't sell products, don't need the website to do invoicing or billing, don't ship to clients ...
Difficult to make a recommendation without enough info; I mean one man's expensive is somebody else's cheap.
I have been happily using www.metanet.ch for some 6 or 7 years. Lots of capacity, many email addresses, easy to add free SSL, very quick problem resolution but if you do not need that stuff then...
Fair point.
My website is basic Wordpress, used only to host my own travel posts for friends and family.
I am currently paying GoDaddy about $10/month, but don't really utilise all that they have to offer. I'd like to cut that in half, TBH. In addition, I pay them something for my domain renewal, but that shouldn't be too much, either.
https://www.cyon.ch/domains/
These guys